ℹ️ What is Amazon VPC?
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) is a service that lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. This virtual network closely resembles a traditional network that you’d operate in your own data center, with the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS.
With Amazon VPC, you have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including:
🔒 Security Note
Each VPC is logically isolated from other virtual networks in the AWS Cloud, providing a secure foundation for workloads running on AWS.
VPCs are region-specific resources, meaning you can create multiple VPCs within a single AWS Region. Each VPC is identified by its unique IP address range (CIDR block), such as 10.0.0.0/16. Once created, a VPC’s primary CIDR block cannot be changed.
VPC CIDR blocks can range from:
⚠️ Warning
VPC CIDR blocks must not overlap with any other connected networks, including on-premises networks if you’re planning to connect them.
Amazon VPC was introduced after Amazon EC2. For a period, AWS offered two networking platforms:
As of December 2013, AWS exclusively supports EC2-VPC. Each AWS Region includes a default VPC with a default subnet using a CIDR block of 172.31.0.0/16.
💡 Pro Tip
While the default VPC is convenient for getting started quickly, creating custom VPCs allows for more precise network design and better security controls for production workloads.
In the following sections, we will explore these fundamental VPC components in detail, demonstrating how they work together to create secure, scalable network architectures in AWS.